Questioning Mistakes That Cost You Your Deals

The Needs Analysis is no doubt, a critical step of the sales process. Execute properly and and you pave the way for a higher probability sale. Execute poorly and you disconnect!

Execute poorly on a regular basis and;

You’re going to have really skinny kids!

Here are several questioning mistakes to avoid at all cost!

1) Failure to have the proper communication environment. This includes everything from not having enough time, to allowing people to tell you “we know exactly what we want so you don’t have to ask us those questions” etc.

3) Asking a sh*tty question. This includes everything from questions that you could have answered yourself by taking a time to research (How many locations do you have? etc) to weak questions that don’t serve you or the prospect.

4) Asking a good question at the wrong time. When we jump right in with a more intimate question, a prospect might think “Who the heck is the person to ask me that? I don’t know them or trust them” and then they shut down on you.

5) Answering your own question. Don’t laugh. It happens more than you think!

6) Asking a clichéd question. Examples “What keeps you up at night? “On a scale from 1-10 how is your present service?” “What would it take to make them a 10?”

7) Asking a set up or “salesy” question. These are the questions that they see coming from like a hundred miles away. My favorite “If I could show you a way to blah, blah, would you seriously consider blah?” I think the 80’s called and wants their sh*tty question back!

8) Being so attached to your questions on paper that you don’t follow up on the answer or allow the conversation to naturally go to different places and topics.

9) Demonstrating that you weren’t listening.

10) Asking questions that are so full of prefacing and tangents that they confuse the prospect.

11) Making the Needs Analysis an interrogation instead of a conversation.

12) Failure to validate feelings. When someone tells you about a challenge or an incident, don’t race to the next question, acknowledge and validate.

13) Conclusive Questions (aka putting words in the other person’s mouth) Example “Tell me about the challenges you are having with your current vendor” Meanwhile, nobody said anything about challenges.

14) Allowing Unproductive Tangents. Part of your responsibility as the professional is to facilitate a process without being controlling. If the conversation is going in a direction that isn’t beneficial, then you need to get things back on topic.

15) Failure to Customize Your Questions based on your Pre Call Planning findings. Don’t be this creature of habit who must ask the questions they always asked. Better to have your arsenal, and choose your weapon and even create your weapon based on the situation at hand.